TechCrunch opines on the open government efforts and the pros and cons of being more open. I’m troubled by this statement:
Except there is one big problem: indifference. Most people will not do anything with that data.
If we approached all policies and strategies to increase citizen involvement with an assumption of indifference why would we try anything at all?
This is incredibly self-defeating and has almost no prior evidence to support the claim. Yes there are those currently motivate to abuse this openness. And that abuse may be the motivation to get currently inactive citizens active – they can now compete with the politically powerful using the same data.
Of course there are citizens that are indifferent. However, I think more often than not ignorance or competiting objectives are the issue not blatant indifference. People care deeply about our government. No not everyone is going to showcase that care by mashing up government data. We’re better off with the chance that we all can do that if we want.
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